IDF Digital Home Update

Don MacDonald – Vice President Digital Home Group & General Manager Digital Home Group – was on hand once more to give an update on Intel’s digital home vision. With the launch of Viiv back in January, MacDonald was keen to solidify its importance in the future of the digital home.

One of the key points of MacDonald’s keynote was the simplicity of Viiv and how seamlessly it will integrate into consumers’ homes. If there’s one thing that’s stopped the PC from becoming a truly consumer friendly product, it’s that it isn’t as simple as a consumer electronics device. Consumers don’t want to know how a product works, they just want it to work.

In order to prove just how simple it is to setup Viiv, MacDonald brought a colleague on stage and then timed how long it took her to configure a Viiv PC, set up a secure wireless network, install a digital media adapter and then stream some video from the Viiv PC, via the DMA to a TV. The entire process took three minutes 51 seconds – very impressive.

That said, having setup many wireless networks and digital media adapters in the past, I would like to try this particular experiment myself. MacDonald touched on the idea that Viiv devices can handshake with each other and transfer the necessary digital keys in order to get connected quickly and simply. I’m not sure how you’re ensuring security if the keys are transmitted automatically, but I’m keen to find out exactly how this super-fast Viiv configuration works.